Live in Australia so no weapons allowed guns or knives or other dangerous weapons.

However, I do have according to God's Word Angels watching over me. Since they aren't visible to the human eye I guess you could call them concealed weapons. :angelcutie

Joseph The Carpenter

December 24th, 2007, 08:09 AM

Live in Australia so no weapons allowed guns or knives or other dangerous weapons.

However, I do have according to God's Word Angels watching over me. Since they aren't visible to the human eye I guess you could call them concealed weapons. :angelcutie

:wave Are there any murders in your country?
How do you cut your food if you do not have any knives?:aha
Are there any criminals who have weapons, gun knives, sticks, stones?
I do not want to start an arguement just curious:hug

Byrd

December 24th, 2007, 01:34 PM

WVBorn56,
You are correct, this a tough call, and I will agree that carrying a concealed weapon is not for everyone. It takes dedication and training.

Your thought on the Martyrs is a good and valid one. I guess my thinking on that is that I would die for Christ, but I will not die at the hands of a violent felon! When someone in our society commits a crime, they do their time and are released, more often than not to repeat what they have done before.

In my case, I was mugged for money, not for the cause of Christ. Whoever did it is free to do it again, as they were never caught. In the two cases concerning the women I knew, the individuals that attacked them are free to do it again.

A good example of this is O.J. Simpson...did he or did he not? His actions in Las Vegas show that he was free to weild a weapon against others. If justice had been done in the first place, that would not have happened, not to mention the millions of dollars his hijinks have cost taxpayers!

Multiply that case by the hundreds and you will see my point, the guilty go free to prey again.

I think the issue is not martyerdom, but self defense against those who have no morals or conscience. I will admit, that having been a victim, I am very prejudiced on this subject.

Thanks for your thought provoking post!

Mitsy

December 24th, 2007, 11:34 PM

:wave Are there any murders in your country?
How do you cut your food if you do not have any knives?:aha
Are there any criminals who have weapons, gun knives, sticks, stones?
I do not want to start an arguement just curious:hug

Jo

Fair question!

Yes unfortunately we do have murders. Just because they are illegal doesn't mean that there aren't criminals who have them (illegally of course). However the strick laws against weapons means that a cop can arrest someone just for possessing a weapon. Easier to get a conviction because the illegal possession of a gun certainly means that they had intent to murder.

We had a first massacre many years ago in a tourist spot in Tasmania called Port Arthur (the guys name was Martin Bryant) which brought in the anti-gun laws here. No indiscrimnant massacres since so I guess it is working to an extent.

There are a certain types of knives that are specifically illegal like flick knives. Yes we can have our steak knives just not carry it in your handbag and threaten anyone with it. Even pepper spray is illegal for civilians to carry. So many of my girlfriends carry hairspray or spray on deodorant in their bags instead.

I believe our anti-gun laws certainly are keeping guns out of the hands of the young kids. Teenagers mostly commit crimes with knives. They can't take out a whole room of people and have to commit their crimes close up to their victim. If you are far enough away you have a chance to run or if there are enough tough guys around they could tackle them (this is higly dangerous and not recommended).

I grew up before the gun laws came in. I was taught to shoot from a very young age and went hunting. However, it is one thing to kill a wild boar or rabbit than it is to shoot a person. Not that I have shot anyone, but I don't think I could use a gun to defend myself. I have used both rifle and handguns.

I have no problems taking a heavy object and hitting someone unconscious to defend myself. Grew up in the country with lots of boy cousins so I know how to defend myself. I've had to a number of times in the city when I was in my early twenties while travelling home on public transport. I don't travel on public transport these days I drive to where I have to go now and pay for parking.

NewWorldOrder

December 25th, 2007, 02:10 PM

Easier to get a conviction because the illegal possession of a gun certainly means that they had intent to murder.

Isn't that a very broad assumption? :twitch

Mitsy

December 25th, 2007, 11:50 PM

Isn't that a very broad assumption? :twitch

I'm not a trying a legal case so my assumption can be as broad as it likes.

zhan

December 26th, 2007, 03:49 AM

They're trying to do that here in America too by degrees. Trying to make simple possession of a weapon equate to you wanting to do someone harm. The fact that so many people are freaked out if they know you own a gun (much less carry one) means they're succeeding.

NewWorldOrder

December 26th, 2007, 10:05 AM

I'm not a trying a legal case so my assumption can be as broad as it likes.

Amazing. :doh

I found this article from an Australian newspaper dated Oct. 2006.

Buyback has no effect on murder rate

HALF a billion dollars spent buying back hundreds of thousands of guns after the Port Arthur massacre had no effect on the homicide rate, says a study published in an influential British journal.

The report by two Australian academics, published in the British Journal of Criminology, said statistics gathered in the decade since Port Arthur showed gun deaths had been declining well before 1996 and the buyback of more than 600,000 mainly semi-automatic rifles and pump-action shotguns had made no difference in the rate of decline.

Yes Statistics can be used to say anything you like. I should know as a Computure consultant who worked mainly in Finance and especially delivering Statistical Analysis for Management and Marketing, it's amazing what you can do when applying different types of criteria to Data.

The only way for sure that we can know if the guns laws have worked or not is to do a real time test case where you have two popluations of exactly the same types of people (and everthing about their living conditions etc is also exactly the same). One population has gun laws the other does not. Then you look at the two test populations asn see whether or not gun laws work or not.

Meanwhile, those statisticians are working on a premise that decline prior to gun buyback meant that decline after cannot be attributed at all to a gun buyback. How do they know where is their proof? It is only assumption they are working on they have no proof. There may not have been a continuation of that a decline if gun laws had not been put in place. They have no way of knowing.

In the end I am happy with Australian laws. In the last few years there are a whole lot of young hoons who go around using roman candles and crackers as weapons (they use them out of car windows and do it for fun to get a reaction). That is bad enough. Heaven help us if they could all run around with guns. Now of course one with a true criminal nature will find himself a gun and all I do is pray that the Lord keep us safe from them.